When librarians collide
by unseenu
Summary: Strange things are happening to the apes of the Roundworld,unnoticed among them walks one very unusual orangutan
1. Chapter 1

In a city on a flat world atop four elephants atop a giant turtle there is a building, the High Energy Magic building. Within this building exists another world, not a sensible flat one, but a truly absurd spherical one. This is the Roundworld.

The Roundworld universe began life as an industrial byproduct of splitting the thaum into its constituent flavours. These days it is maintained by the ever watchful eye of HEX and the wizards of the university take care of it as they would an exotic pet, and it is exotic. There is no magic, due to the lack of basic elements like narrativium, there aren't even any gods, despite it's inhabitant's best effort to create them.

It was an ordinary day for Ponder Stibbons when he took a routine glance into the omniscope used to monitor this fascinating but impossible world. He was soon to realise that all was not right on the Roundworld...

"Hmm,that's interesting"he said to himself,adjusting his glasses. (Nobody ever says this sort of thing to themselves but the laws of narrative causality require him to in order for the audience to understand what he's thinking,how he knew there was an audience watching I have no idea.).

The great magical looking glass before him showed a distorted image of the scenes on the planet below:

The Roundworld humans were corralling chimps, gorillas and orangutans on a massive scale. He watched as they were tortured and baited into sweeping the streets, pouring water into jugs and sorting mail.

Shaking his head disapprovingly he turned the omniscope off and went about his daily tasks, he would be sure to bring this up at the regular meetings the wizards held on whether or not to interfere in Roundworld affairs...

"Order order!"shouted Ponder to the assembled wizardry gathered around the flimsy wooden table that had been set up in front of the omniscope.

"I'll have a distressed pudding and a pint of beer,"muttered the Bursar to himself.

"Ook," ooked the Librarian, his coconut face fixed into an expression of curiosity.

Almost immediately the committee fell silent and Ponder cleared his throat, "I've called you here because I have noticed some strange happenings on the Roundworld," he declared, aware that the older wizards' attention spans were very short when it came to matters of high energy magic. He cleared his throat again and continued, "To save the hassle of aiming the omniscope I've taken some iconographs of what I've seen happening over the past few weeks."

He reached into his pocket and produced a bundle of paintings which he placed in the centre of the table, without much argument they were grabbed and passed around. Various gasps and "hmm"s echoed around the room.

"Ooook!,"a dismayed Librarian mouthed as he examined a painting of Orangutans being whipped into sorting books.

"So they're using apes for labour,what's wrong with that?" the Archchancellor scoffed, "We do that."

"Ook!" said the Librarian.

"Yes, but, but this is different"replied Ponder, "We only have one and we don't torture it, erm, him. Can we really let them continue?"

Ridcully thought for a moment then replied, "I was told that when you first created this planet you agreed that you had to protect and enrich the humans that lived on it, not its ape population. This is making their lives so much more comfortable isn't it?.Perhaps this is just how society develops without magic. It poses no threat to the well being of those people, its not like the apes are going to rise up and destroy them is it? Haha! The very idea."

Ponder nodded, "Very well sir I will just continue to observe and make my reports as normal."he agreed, "Ok next order of business, do we let them continue to develop what they call...New-clear capabilities?"...

The meeting ended after discussing more mundane management of the Roundworld, when the agenda was complete one by one the Wizards returned to their dwellings. The Librarian made his way alone back to his nest under the library desk full of thought. He thought of those poor apes he had witnessed, always being ordered about by their human masters, he chuckled as he realised he was in a similar situation. Even though he had once been human and as far as he could tell the apes of the Roundworld were just ordinary animals, he could tell they were not happy.

A burning idea forming in his simian skull, he lifted himself from his nest and headed into the library's maze of books. He had felt the itch to visit the Roundworld out of curiosity many times but now the time felt right. He rearranged a few books and dived through a book-wormhole. He wouldn't be missed, its not like students ever used the library...


	2. Chapter 2

Like he had been hit by a lead pipe the Librarian tumbled into ordinary space, or as ordinary as space can be when there is no magic. He got to his orange hand-like feet and looked around at the wide library aisle he had found himself in, curiously he had found himself in the fantasy section, although from the cover illustrations he could see the subject matter didn't look much like fantasy. The majority of the books showed perfectly ordinary scenes of wizards, dwarves and other such mundane things. On a few of them he even recognised his own world, this didn't surprise him much, of course a few images of the real world outside were going to find their way into the heads of Roundworld authors.

Just as he was reaching for one of the Discworld books to see if he was mentioned in it he heard shuffling footsteps at the end of the corridor. Turning his head with the obligatory "ook" he saw that it was not a human but a fellow orang-utan, he watched as the ape stared intently at the shelves,hovering it's hand deliberately over the shelves before grabbing at a book and crawling away with it in her fist.

The Librarian listened as he heard the thump thump of her footsteps moving around the library before they suddenly stopped.

"No!" he heard a human voice say in the most unpleasant manner. There was a slap and the Librarian heard the orang-utan ook in pain. After several minutes the orang-utan reappeared in the corridor, for the first time acknowledging the Librarian's presence with an "ook?".She selected another book and was off again, this time the Librarian cautiously followed her.

After a low speed chase through tightly packed modern shelves he emerged into the light close behind her. A female human Librarian turned her head from her work and looked in utter confusion, she distinctly remembered buying and training only one orang-utan yet it appeared that there were two before her. With dread she wondered if she had been hitting the whiskey she kept in the filing cabinet too hard.

Remembering the task she had set her new book monkey, (something she had called all interns before ape enslavement became routine) she examined the book it had selected and shook her head. Once again she struck the defenceless ape with a cry of "No!".The Librarian, that is the simian one, Dr Wobblehat as he was known before the accident,turned his head in pity.

The Librarian, that is the human one, the one with the whiskey in her filing cabinet, stood up and curiously examined the Librarian, that is the simian one. "I wonder," she muttered to herself (people don't say things like this to themselves but it is helpful to pretend that she did).

Ignoring her own animal the Librarian crossed to , erm, the Librarian and glanced at her paperwork. She set it down and held up some fingers in rapid succession,the Librarian watched her with a perplexed look on his face.

Eventually he became frustrated and grabbed at the paperwork, scanning it expertly with his finger before vanishing into the books once more. The Librarian listened as the Librarian thumped away in the maze of shelves. She felt sure that he was destroying her entire inventory but was pleasantly surprised when he returned with all the books on the list in a neat stack.

"Ook!"he said proudly as he set them down. The human Librarian looked on perplexed and impressed, she had seen human book monkeys do a less efficient job. She watched as he crossed to a sloppy pile of index cards on the table and after glancing at them briefly filed them away automatically.

"Marvellous!" declared the Librarian not expecting either of the apes to understand, "I may have to keep you and send that other pathetic creature back to Ape management for some electroshock treatment."

The simian librarian had heard about electric shocks from the HEM technicians,they were not pleasant. With a sense of urgency he crossed to the other ape and whispered something into her ear,a look of shock came over her face, then confusion, then understanding. The librarian gave her a comforting tap on the back before she bolted into the library corridors.

Thinking on his hand-like feet the Libarian grabbed the hand of the human Librarian and led her outside with an ook that suggested "follow me."

The human Librarian protested with several violent "NO!"s but allowed herself to to be dragged to the front of the building, this ape seemed smarter than most. The ape librarian was looking around as if it had never seen the world outside before, which indeed he hadn't. The concrete, the streetlamps, the chimps clearing away the litter, were all completely new to him .

He turned and looked at her before running at all speed back inside, leaving her outside thinking to herself just what the heck the stupid monkey had wanted. Moments later when she re-entered the library both apes were gone...

…The female book monkey, who was named Osheen by her previous owner, looked around in confusion. She was in a new library now, one much more ancient than the one which had been her prison for the past few months. She had simply followed the instructions of the male she had met in the fantasy section: "They are going to kill you,jump through shelf 12a and wait for me."

There was some kind of rebellion happening in a few weeks that she had agreed to be a part of but she felt safer here. Now all she had to do was wait and, as she had been trained to do, find the library's front desk.


	3. Chapter 3

The Librarian once again tumbled into magicless space. A quick glance around confirmed that he was in the same library, although it was now dark and unforgiving. He sniffed the dusty air and gathered his thoughts, thinking of Osheen. He hoped that she had found her way safely to the university library as he had planned, the thought of any harm coming to such a pretty creature sent a shiver down his curved spine.

With a resolute ook he turned away from the shelf he had emerged from and lolloped towards the entrance, or at least the hole where the entrance used to be. Many small yet heavy objects had clearly been hurled at the building, windows were smashed and two wooden splinters on each hinge were all that remained of the library door. Concerned at this, he headed out onto the bizarre stone streets, made all the more terrifying by the orange of the unnatural streetlights. A burning smell hung in the air and everything was damaged in some way, just as he was inspecting the wreck of a burned out lorry he heard the chatter of voices in the distance. The figures approached, revealing themselves to be unpleasant looking chimpanzees that carried improvised weapons more menacing than their bearers. They regarded the librarian for a moment before one spoke up, not in ooks but ordinary human words, "Come and join us brother, we've heard rumours of a human hideout on the other side of town, we're going to have a little fun with them!"

The other chimps burst into a chorus of demonic laughter at this, unlike their speech, this still sounded very much apelike. To be polite the librarian ooked fiercely and rose his fist into the air, as a mock revolutionary salute, then ran at full pelt back into the library.

"That's Orang's for you," scoffed the alpha of the chimps, "Nothing but cowardly academics."

Laughing at this the chimps carried on into the night to add one more act of mindless violence to the revolution that had been sweeping planet earth for over a month…

…In the relative safety of the gutted library the librarian hung his head, he remembered the time he'd tried to educate the apes of Roundworld, millions of years ago. He was not sure where his educated apes had gone, it seemed like they had all just vanished (or turned into humans, an idea so absurd that he snorted with laughter).Perhaps his lessons had finally sunk in, making a race of intelligent, yet still very violent apes. Pondering on how much of this was his fault and how much was the normal path of evolution in a world with no gods or magic, he dived once again into L-Space.


	4. Chapter 4

Osheen picked her way through the terrifying oaken bookshelves that towered above her menacingly. She had been used to tiny public libraries which you could see all the walls of at one time, this demonic cathedral of written works was an entirely new experience for her. It would have been a lot to take in even if it had been a university library of the more mundane sort back on her own round world. The grimoires that growled and rattled in their chains and the random sparks of occult energy only added to the confusion.

At long last she emerged from the maze of ancient shelves into the little foyer with the librarian's front desk in the corner, a quick glance on all sides revealed his little nest of straw and partially finished paperwork. Feeling that she was entering a residence without permission she sat among it, sniffing the scent of the kindly orang that had rescued her from life as a book monkey, even if he seemed to be one himself. As she sat a sudden clunk suggested to her that someone had entered the room, she cautiously lifted her head above the desk and saw that the figure was a dark haired human in round glasses. He wore an unusual dress and a pointy hat which she had only ever seen on covers of books in the fantasy section, he strode nervously over to the desk and rapped on it. He saw the orange forehead and declared confidently, "Ah there you are, sorry to bother you but I need the manual for casting 'Norton's Wall of Fire'. HEX has picked up a couple of little curses from scanning L-space that are making him run very slowly, I thought a metaphorical wall of fire might be just the thing to protect him from that."

Osheen ooked in genuine confusion. She watched as he removed an index card from his pocket, similar to the ones she was used to but like everything here, somehow more medieval and arcane.

"Hex printed that out," said the wizard, who she later found out was named Ponder Stibbons, "Surely you will be able to find it for me, you are the librarian after all."

Osheen took the card and stared at it, she had never been able to read before, and in fact she still couldn't. However, in the disc's strong magical field, words have a tendency to be sentient and shout their meaning at your mind's ear. The numbers on the card made perfect sense to Osheen's mind and, acting on her training, she headed off into the maze of shelves.

She thought her days of fetching books were over but it was what she had come to expect, after all, if she didn't fetch the book Stibbons would no doubt shout "No!" and inflict pain on her with a cattle prod. She hoped that the orang-utan would come back soon, perhaps life in libraries wouldn't be so bad if he was there with her to keep troublesome humans in line. Shrugging off the thought she reached the shelf that the numbers had specified to her, she looked up and gulped. It seemed the shelf she needed was at the very top, her instincts took over and she began to climb with great sweeping movements. Her fear forgotten, she felt absolutely wonderful, the long missed experience of climbing brought back memories of happier times in the forests of Borneo. Her old mistress would never have let her do this, if she had tried to climb the squat metal shelves in her own library she would have shouted "No!" (Not to mention inflicted pain on her with a cattle prod).

Reaching the summit of the trees (all towers of wood that you can climb are thought of as trees in orang-utan culture, perhaps this is why the librarian enjoys his work so much) she seized the requested book proudly. She could not believe that she was enjoying the experience of book fetching for once, with another burst of strength she heaved herself onto the very top of the massive bookshelf and ran in the direction of the entrance. The shelves seemed to stretch out in all directions infinitely, in most situations this would be a metaphor but here, that was exactly what was happening. She reached the end of the shelf and tossed it to the figure of Stibbons far below with a triumphant "Oooooooooooooooook!

In the magical field of the library the book fell as though through treacle, Stibbons caught it and left hurriedly, perplexed by the Librarians' odd behaviour.

Osheen looked around at the infinite wooden platforms she had to explore, although she would not go back into the deep library, what she had seen there had been terrifying. She sized up the nearest one and made a jump for it, but was struck painfully in mid leap by some burst of magic, the books did not take kindly to strange orang-utans in their domain. She fell painfully slowly, as the book had done. Books leapt out at her from the shelves all the way down, until she finally landed softly but with great force. Books continued to leap off the shelf, burying her in a pile. Finally, it stopped, whatever cloud of magic that was riling the books had probably drifted away. A hand emerged from the now inanimate pile of books followed by a head, then a body. Eventually a whole figure stepped out…it was a young human girl in a thin white dress.


	5. Chapter 5

The librarian emerged even further in the future, and he sensed a good many miles from where he'd been previously. When making a temporal journey within one library, sooner or later you are going to reach a point where that library no longer exists, or hasn't been built yet. When this happens the other end of the book-wormhole jumps to the next nearest mass of books, if destruction of the world it is on is what caused the library in question to cease existing then this mass might be on another planet. The Librarian was fairly certain that he wasn't on a different planet but he might as well have been. Gone was the never ending concrete and metal of the decadent age of humans, the building he was in was wrought with all the sophistication of an ant mound, little more than a clay cone with entrance holes cut into it.

The Librarian pulled a book from the crude shelves at random and began to flick through it, it was always fascinating to read the writings of other civilisations. In the Librarian's experience, because different worlds were so, well, different, their academic works often came across as highly amusing fantasies to outsiders. He imagined an extra-dimensional visitor to the Discworld flicking through serious works like "Stripfettle's believe it or not Grimoire" or "Principia Explosia" and having a good giggle to themselves.

The book he had picked up seemed to be some religious text, describing an angry creator, the collapse of a race of evil creatures and great migrations of the enslaved faithful. He replaced the book and glanced at the shelf, the word 'History' was daubed on it in primitive dye. The Librarian sighed, some high priest with a big knife tells you that something is fact and you take his word as, well, Gospel. He turned to another section, this one was labelled 'Science', whatever that was.

He selected another, fairly thin volume. The paper cover read: 'Academy of Science, a pictorial record of our achievements.'

The book contained little text but what seemed to be iconographs, glued onto the yellowing paper with a little paragraph describing each one. The pictures mainly showed figures handling simple machines and flasks of liquid, but it was the figures themselves that were unusual. They were apes, mainly orang-utans, he noted with pride, alongside them in less senior roles were chimpanzees. These chimps appeared much more sophisticated than the street thugs he had encountered a thousand years ago.

He returned the book to its place (pausing to straighten some mis-shelved books) and sighed once more. It had happened again. Every few thousand years on this absurd round world, the civilisation of one species would end and one species would begin their own, strutting around like they were the only one to ever do so. He had seen the civilisation of jellyfish give way before the crabs made their great leap sideways, then those pottery making lizards with the teeth and scales had come along. After that it had been the turn of those weird upright apes, then humans, and now apes again. No doubt somewhere there would be a statue to the great big ape in the sky.

As he thought he wandered into the baking sunlight outside the library. He was standing on a long causeway with a huge market underway beneath him, clothed apes wandered here and there mimicking the actions of the humans who had come before. Sure enough, in the distance, was a shrine to the big ape in the sky. He probably would have climbed down to mingle with his own kind had it not been for a loud demanding voice shouting from inside the library, "Librarian! Librarian!" it called. Overcome with curiosity the Librarian dipped back inside.

The shouter was a stern Gorilla talking with a pale looking Orang that was clearly the librarian he had called. From behind another shelf of mangled truths he watched as they talked,

"Doctor Zaius requests a copy of the Lawgiver's treatise on man, he is preparing for some tribunal or other on the lower levels," Explained the Gorilla.

"Ah yes, I heard something about that," said the orang-utan, brimming with intellectual curiosity, "The rumour goes that they've found a very remarkable human."

The Librarian's ears pricked in confusion, they spoke of humans as if they still existed. The Librarian watched as the librarian crossed to the other side of the room and began to climb a ladder of all things, the Librarian shook his head in shame, how low his species had sunk on this world.

"I was on guard in the cages yesterday," mumbled the gorilla, "I didn't see any of the filthy animals that looked particularly special."

"Oook!" thought the librarian, the idea of humans in cages almost as bad as apes in cages. He was glad that the young ape he'd rescued in the library would never live to see how corrupt her world would become, the apes were freed, only to become oppressors themselves. He shrugged off the thought, by becoming an ape he'd won the right to not worry about such matters and worry instead about where the next banana was coming from. It was this trail of thought that made him think about getting back to Osheen, it had been completely pushed out of his mind by his busy half hour of dimension hopping. With the organ-utan and the gorilla still organising their affairs, The Librarian pressed his ear against the bookshelf in front of him and listened. L-space is never further away than the other side of the shelf but it takes a highly skilled librarian to know when to step over, he counted to three and melted seamlessly into the books.


End file.
